The former anthropology professor's wide-ranging research has forced him into an expertise he is not entirely comfortable with: the global arms industry. Halper argues that Israel is cashing in - both financially and diplomatically - on systems of control it has developed in the occupied territories. It is exporting its know-how to global elites keen to protect their privileges from both external and internal challengers.

In a world supposedly mired in an endless war on terror, we may all be facing a future as Palestinians.

Halper's book, entitled War Against the People, due out next month, suggests that Israel provides a unique window on some of the most important recent developments in what he terms "securocratic warfare". The book's central thesis emerged as he tried to understand why tiny Israel hits way beyond its weight economically, politically and militarily. How does Israel have so much clout - not only in the US and Europe but, more surprisingly in countries as diverse as India, Brazil and China?

None of the usual explanations - Holocaust guilt, the power of lobbies, even the growth in Christian fundamentalism - seemed to provide a complete answer.

Global pacification

Zeev Maoz, an Israeli political science professor based in California, set Halper on a different track. "He has observed that one of the Zionist movement's fundamental tenets was to tie its wagon to a hegemon, serving it," Halper says. The Zionists did that early on by cultivating British support in Palestine. Once established as a state, Israel helped the French and British at Suez in 1956, and after 1967 Israel served as a US surrogate in the Middle East during the Cold War.

In the post-9/11 world, Israel is security king - or "securityland", as a leading Israeli analyst recently described it.

And significantly, Israel is starting to parlay this usefulness into wider political and diplomatic support, says Halper, even as the international community grows exasperated by nearly 50 years of occupation. Such backing, including from much of the Arab world, often remains hidden from view.

US president Dwight Eisenhower's grim warning from the 1950s that a rampant "military-industrial complex" was threatening to become the real power behind the FAçade of popular democracy needs updating, says Halper. He describes the emergence of what he calls the MISSILE complex: full-spectrum dominance by the US and its allies through the joint activity of the military, internal security, surveillance, intelligence and law enforcement.

After decades of controlling Palestinians under occupation, he notes, Israel is unrivalled in all these spheres. It uses the occupied territories as a giant laboratory for developing and testing new ideas, technology, tactics and weaponry.An arms superpower

As we meet at his home in West Jerusalem, Halper is keen to stress that he is only sketching the outlines of the new US-led global pacification industry. He has entered largely uncharted waters. Journalists, analysts and academics have shied away from the necessary research, he claims, preferring to keep within their narrow specialisations.

Halper is interested in "big-picture" analysis, joining up the dots. And doing so has forced him to explore unfamiliar territory, reading up on key texts in security studies, poring over the works of terrorism experts, and meeting decorated generals. Halper points out that Israel spends about 8 percent of its GDP a year on the military, about twice the per capita expenditure of the United States. Despite its size, Israel has more military aircraft than any European country.

Israel has four of the world's top 100 arms manufacturers, and is ranked among the top 10 arms dealing countries, in some assessments as high as fourth place. The Global Militarisation Index has crowned Israel the most militarised nation on the planet every year since 2007. In May Israel won a new accolade, becoming a "cyber superpower", its companies selling about a tenth of the world's computer and network security technology.

That focus on the military and weapons systems has led Israel into official military relations with 130 countries, many of them dictatorships known for their human rights violations. Reports suggest that Israel engages in more dubious and secretive deals with additional regimes.

This month the United Nations disclosed that Israel was breaking a western arms embargo on selling weapons to South Sudan, fuelling the civil war there. Critics have suggested that Israel also has advisers and trainers operating clandestinely in South Sudan.

End of conventional wars

But Israel's real talent, says Halper, has been to exploit a new emphasis on "securocratic warfare".

"Wars between states are largely a thing of the past," he observes. "In the new kind of warfare, F-35 jets and nuclear weapons are far less useful. What is needed now are the skills Israel has developed after a century of 'counter-insurgency' against the Palestinians. Israel is the go-to country when it comes to securocratic warfare."

The need for this kind of warfare was highlighted following the US attack on Iraq in 2003, he notes. Conventional wars between states have traditionally involved three phases: operational preparations, the actual attack, and the outcome. But Iraq - as well as Afghanistan before it - showed a fourth stage: the need for stabilisation and peace-keeping following regime change.

The pacification industry that has boomed post-9/11, Halper notes, is spreading back to the West. As the military takes on many of the duties of a police force in external wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, back home the police become ever more militarised. Police in Ferguson look indistinguishable from their compatriots in the US army in Iraq.

"What we are seeing is the rise of the human-security state - endless 'war on terror', the world in a permanent state of emergency. The traditional hard walls between the police and the military, between domestic and overseas intelligence agencies - between the FBI and the CIA , if you like - crumble."

Warrior cops

For elites who see danger lurking around every corner, Israel has the answer: what he calls the "warrior cop". For decades Israel has been operating paramilitary forces like the Border Police, as well as intelligence services like the Shin Bet, whose area of operational responsibility is not constrained by distinctions between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

"Israel created the model long ago of the military and police working together, and now it is well-placed to train the world," Halper concludes.

That point was underscored this week when the Israeli government announced that a long-time army officer, Gal Hirsch, would become the head of Israel's national police force. What is at stake? Are the US and Europe not trying to defend themselves against real terror threats? Halper believes it is important to examine these developments within a larger framework: the capitalist world system.

It is no coincidence, he believes, that the US is talking up global terror threats at the same time as wealth and power have de-territorialised, creating an archipelago of elite interests that stretch from parts of the US and Europe to Singapore and the Virgin Islands. Transnational corporations need secure corridors for the flow of capital and labour, he argues, as the much of the rest of the world turns into wastelands or slums.

The concern is how to maintain a social order conducive to capitalism as great swaths of the globe are impoverished and migrants try to escape their desperate plight. This is where Israel has stepped in. The place where Israel has developed its ideas and tested them is the occupied territories, says Halper. The control of Gaza, for example, offers a blueprint for other states concerned about domestic surveillance, border security, urban warfare, migration threats, and much more.

"The Palestinians, in this sense, are an important resource for Israel. Without the occupied territories, Israel would be New Zealand. It would be a tourist destination, not a regional hegemon."

A place at NATO's table

Israel's arms industry isn't just aimed at making money. "It puts Israel at the table with NATO countries." Israel conducts military exercises with NATO, and helps develop Watchkeeper drones for the Europeans.

It also has increasingly close ties, says Halper, with regimes that are ostensibly its enemy, such as Saudi Arabia. "The Saudis are funding ISIS [Islamic State], so how does one explain their alliance with Israel? The common denominator is 'security politics'. No two countries have interests more alike than Israel and Saudi Arabia."

When the Saudis unveiled the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, Halper argues, they offered, in return for an end to the occupation, the Arab world's recognition of Israel as the regional hegemon. Is Israel's usefulness paying off diplomatically?

There are indications that increasingly it is. The Economist recently noted that India, which has long track record of supporting the Palestinians, was among five countries abstaining at the UN Human Rights Council last month on a resolution criticising Israel for its conduct in Gaza last summer in a 51-day attack that killed more than 500 children.

The magazine added that Israeli officials believe the international community's growing dependence on its arms will reduce its vulnerability over the long term to the boycott (BDS) movement.

Halper points out that Nigeria, another country that has become reliant on Israeli arms, recently also betrayed its traditional support for the Palestinians.

Nigeria saved Israel and the US great embarrassment last December when it voted in the UN Security Council against a Palestinian resolution demanding an end to the occupation. The US had feared that it would have to cast its veto.

Halper emphasises that the US is still the world's largest arms dealer by some margin. But in its scramble to fill the niches, Israel helps shine a light on the arms industry's true purpose: not security, but pacification.

"When you call it 'security', you shut down the debate. Who doesn't want security? But when you reframe it is as 'pacification', the real goals become much clearer."

Cynic that I have become. I am totally torn between give peace a chance, and (when that looks totally impossible) Nuke the SOBs.
.
Americans have been shedding the blood of their sons and daughters on lost causes for far too long. Personally my heart aches because of the endless frustration of it all!
.
I am totally against the Militarization of local police forces and the many many violations of the Constitution in the New Amerika.

* Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply.** Resistance to Tyrants, is obedience to God. * Thomas Jefferson*Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.* Thomas Paine

If you are a Bible reading religious Person, then you KNOW, there will be NO PEACE, EVER.... It doesn't matter if the whole world, gets together and Sings "KUMBA YA" every hour, of every day, for the rest to Time, Peace is a Fantisy... That only Idiots and the demented could posibbly believe in... The Advacery is reining with BLOOD & Horror, on the Earth, and will continue to do so, until the End.... If you believe otherwise, that is your Issue, not mine. Mess with Me, or mine, and. I will send you a .308 Ticket to meet your GOD, with no regrets, on my end. Just telling it like it is.... YMMV....

Bruce in alaska (BTPost) An Atheist will never be able to say, "I TOLD YOU SO"!! ....

I hope for the best and plan for the worst. And I always stand that God can create something new thru man. If you believe the future is set in stone and that God can't create something different if HE chooses I feel sorry for you because you missed the message in the New Testament

Security, much like peace, is determined by those that are the victors of the struggle/fight/war.... and are obtained by those that are stronger than those against them.

"Freedom isn't free" --Colonel Walter Hitchcock
“The most important six inches on the battlefield is between your ears.” General 'Mad Dog' James Mattis
non semper erit aestas- It will not always be summer (be prepared for hard times)!!

That is an excellent article, and I believe every American should read it.

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. "-- J. Krishnamurti“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.” -- George Orwell
Consider supporting Survivalmonkey.com by becoming a Site Supporter.

I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War II. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.

'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come.'
'My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'
'We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is a religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
'The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.'
'The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous. Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.'

'The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery? Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?
'History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: peace-loving Muslims Have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world Will have begun.'
'Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.'
'Now Islamic prayers have been introduced in Toronto and other public schools in Ontario, and, yes, in Ottawa, too, while the Lord's Prayer was removed (due to being so offensive?). The Islamic way may be peaceful for the time being in our country until the fanatics move in.'

'In Australia, and indeed in many countries around the world, many of the most commonly consumed food items have the halal emblem on them. Just look at the back of some of the most popular chocolate bars, and at other food items in your local supermarket. Food on aircraft have the halal emblem just to appease the privileged minority who are now rapidly expanding within the nation's shores.'
'In the U.K, the Muslim communities refuse to integrate and there are now dozens of "no-go" zones within major cities across the country that the police force dare not intrude upon. Sharia law prevails there, because the Muslim community in those areas refuse to acknowledge British law.'

'As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts - the fanatics who threaten our way of life.'

I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War II. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.

'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come.'
'My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'
'We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is a religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
'The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.'
'The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous. Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.'

'The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery? Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?
'History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: peace-loving Muslims Have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world Will have begun.'
'Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.'
'Now Islamic prayers have been introduced in Toronto and other public schools in Ontario, and, yes, in Ottawa, too, while the Lord's Prayer was removed (due to being so offensive?). The Islamic way may be peaceful for the time being in our country until the fanatics move in.'

'In Australia, and indeed in many countries around the world, many of the most commonly consumed food items have the halal emblem on them. Just look at the back of some of the most popular chocolate bars, and at other food items in your local supermarket. Food on aircraft have the halal emblem just to appease the privileged minority who are now rapidly expanding within the nation's shores.'
'In the U.K, the Muslim communities refuse to integrate and there are now dozens of "no-go" zones within major cities across the country that the police force dare not intrude upon. Sharia law prevails there, because the Muslim community in those areas refuse to acknowledge British law.'

'As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts - the fanatics who threaten our way of life.'

Click to expand...

That story sure sounds familiar. Thank you Dunerunner for the post. Very revealing.

The former anthropology professor's wide-ranging research has forced him into an expertise he is not entirely comfortable with: the global arms industry. Halper argues that Israel is cashing in - both financially and diplomatically - on systems of control it has developed in the occupied territories. It is exporting its know-how to global elites keen to protect their privileges from both external and internal challengers.

In a world supposedly mired in an endless war on terror, we may all be facing a future as Palestinians.

Halper's book, entitled War Against the People, due out next month, suggests that Israel provides a unique window on some of the most important recent developments in what he terms "securocratic warfare". The book's central thesis emerged as he tried to understand why tiny Israel hits way beyond its weight economically, politically and militarily. How does Israel have so much clout - not only in the US and Europe but, more surprisingly in countries as diverse as India, Brazil and China?

None of the usual explanations - Holocaust guilt, the power of lobbies, even the growth in Christian fundamentalism - seemed to provide a complete answer.

Global pacification

Zeev Maoz, an Israeli political science professor based in California, set Halper on a different track. "He has observed that one of the Zionist movement's fundamental tenets was to tie its wagon to a hegemon, serving it," Halper says. The Zionists did that early on by cultivating British support in Palestine. Once established as a state, Israel helped the French and British at Suez in 1956, and after 1967 Israel served as a US surrogate in the Middle East during the Cold War.

In the post-9/11 world, Israel is security king - or "securityland", as a leading Israeli analyst recently described it.

And significantly, Israel is starting to parlay this usefulness into wider political and diplomatic support, says Halper, even as the international community grows exasperated by nearly 50 years of occupation. Such backing, including from much of the Arab world, often remains hidden from view.

US president Dwight Eisenhower's grim warning from the 1950s that a rampant "military-industrial complex" was threatening to become the real power behind the FAçade of popular democracy needs updating, says Halper. He describes the emergence of what he calls the MISSILE complex: full-spectrum dominance by the US and its allies through the joint activity of the military, internal security, surveillance, intelligence and law enforcement.

After decades of controlling Palestinians under occupation, he notes, Israel is unrivalled in all these spheres. It uses the occupied territories as a giant laboratory for developing and testing new ideas, technology, tactics and weaponry.

An arms superpower

As we meet at his home in West Jerusalem, Halper is keen to stress that he is only sketching the outlines of the new US-led global pacification industry. He has entered largely uncharted waters. Journalists, analysts and academics have shied away from the necessary research, he claims, preferring to keep within their narrow specialisations.

Halper is interested in "big-picture" analysis, joining up the dots. And doing so has forced him to explore unfamiliar territory, reading up on key texts in security studies, poring over the works of terrorism experts, and meeting decorated generals. Halper points out that Israel spends about 8 percent of its GDP a year on the military, about twice the per capita expenditure of the United States. Despite its size, Israel has more military aircraft than any European country.

Israel has four of the world's top 100 arms manufacturers, and is ranked among the top 10 arms dealing countries, in some assessments as high as fourth place. The Global Militarisation Index has crowned Israel the most militarised nation on the planet every year since 2007. In May Israel won a new accolade, becoming a "cyber superpower", its companies selling about a tenth of the world's computer and network security technology.

That focus on the military and weapons systems has led Israel into official military relations with 130 countries, many of them dictatorships known for their human rights violations. Reports suggest that Israel engages in more dubious and secretive deals with additional regimes.

This month the United Nations disclosed that Israel was breaking a western arms embargo on selling weapons to South Sudan, fuelling the civil war there. Critics have suggested that Israel also has advisers and trainers operating clandestinely in South Sudan.

End of conventional wars

But Israel's real talent, says Halper, has been to exploit a new emphasis on "securocratic warfare".

"Wars between states are largely a thing of the past," he observes. "In the new kind of warfare, F-35 jets and nuclear weapons are far less useful. What is needed now are the skills Israel has developed after a century of 'counter-insurgency' against the Palestinians. Israel is the go-to country when it comes to securocratic warfare."

The need for this kind of warfare was highlighted following the US attack on Iraq in 2003, he notes. Conventional wars between states have traditionally involved three phases: operational preparations, the actual attack, and the outcome. But Iraq - as well as Afghanistan before it - showed a fourth stage: the need for stabilisation and peace-keeping following regime change.

The pacification industry that has boomed post-9/11, Halper notes, is spreading back to the West. As the military takes on many of the duties of a police force in external wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, back home the police become ever more militarised. Police in Ferguson look indistinguishable from their compatriots in the US army in Iraq.

"What we are seeing is the rise of the human-security state - endless 'war on terror', the world in a permanent state of emergency. The traditional hard walls between the police and the military, between domestic and overseas intelligence agencies - between the FBI and the CIA , if you like - crumble."

Warrior cops

For elites who see danger lurking around every corner, Israel has the answer: what he calls the "warrior cop". For decades Israel has been operating paramilitary forces like the Border Police, as well as intelligence services like the Shin Bet, whose area of operational responsibility is not constrained by distinctions between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

"Israel created the model long ago of the military and police working together, and now it is well-placed to train the world," Halper concludes.

That point was underscored this week when the Israeli government announced that a long-time army officer, Gal Hirsch, would become the head of Israel's national police force. What is at stake? Are the US and Europe not trying to defend themselves against real terror threats? Halper believes it is important to examine these developments within a larger framework: the capitalist world system.

It is no coincidence, he believes, that the US is talking up global terror threats at the same time as wealth and power have de-territorialised, creating an archipelago of elite interests that stretch from parts of the US and Europe to Singapore and the Virgin Islands. Transnational corporations need secure corridors for the flow of capital and labour, he argues, as the much of the rest of the world turns into wastelands or slums.

The concern is how to maintain a social order conducive to capitalism as great swaths of the globe are impoverished and migrants try to escape their desperate plight. This is where Israel has stepped in. The place where Israel has developed its ideas and tested them is the occupied territories, says Halper. The control of Gaza, for example, offers a blueprint for other states concerned about domestic surveillance, border security, urban warfare, migration threats, and much more.

"The Palestinians, in this sense, are an important resource for Israel. Without the occupied territories, Israel would be New Zealand. It would be a tourist destination, not a regional hegemon."

A place at NATO's table

Israel's arms industry isn't just aimed at making money. "It puts Israel at the table with NATO countries." Israel conducts military exercises with NATO, and helps develop Watchkeeper drones for the Europeans.

It also has increasingly close ties, says Halper, with regimes that are ostensibly its enemy, such as Saudi Arabia. "The Saudis are funding ISIS [Islamic State], so how does one explain their alliance with Israel? The common denominator is 'security politics'. No two countries have interests more alike than Israel and Saudi Arabia."

When the Saudis unveiled the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, Halper argues, they offered, in return for an end to the occupation, the Arab world's recognition of Israel as the regional hegemon. Is Israel's usefulness paying off diplomatically?

There are indications that increasingly it is. The Economist recently noted that India, which has long track record of supporting the Palestinians, was among five countries abstaining at the UN Human Rights Council last month on a resolution criticising Israel for its conduct in Gaza last summer in a 51-day attack that killed more than 500 children.

The magazine added that Israeli officials believe the international community's growing dependence on its arms will reduce its vulnerability over the long term to the boycott (BDS) movement.

Halper points out that Nigeria, another country that has become reliant on Israeli arms, recently also betrayed its traditional support for the Palestinians.

Nigeria saved Israel and the US great embarrassment last December when it voted in the UN Security Council against a Palestinian resolution demanding an end to the occupation. The US had feared that it would have to cast its veto.

Halper emphasises that the US is still the world's largest arms dealer by some margin. But in its scramble to fill the niches, Israel helps shine a light on the arms industry's true purpose: not security, but pacification.

"When you call it 'security', you shut down the debate. Who doesn't want security? But when you reframe it is as 'pacification', the real goals become much clearer."

Click to expand...

Thank you Ganado, for this thread. Hopefully someone on the fence will read this.